Meet the Fight Hunger Web Team
From left: Anna Ylä-Kauttu, Susanne Thörnqvist, Desirée Forsyth-Sommer, Cordelia Salter-Nour, and Emanuele Quinto
- photo in flickr with bios
Fight Hunger is a division of the UN World Food Programme set up to help end child hunger by 2015 which is part of the first Millennium Development Goal. It is a partnership of UN agencies, NGOs, businesses, schools, universities, communities and individuals who all believe that we can work together to end child hunger. The main focus is raising awareness. From their annual global Walk the World to educating decision makers on the importance of well nourished children.
I'm the moderator for the Flickr for Nonprofits Online Affinity Group over at NTEN and during a recent exchange about nonprofits using online photo and (video) contests to call attention to the causes, Cordellia and Susanne caught my attention. They are part of a five-person web team for Fight Hunger, that includes four women and one guy. The one guy on this busy web team is a web developer-programmer named
Emanuele Quinto thinks working with four women: is “Fantastic!”
I interviewed the team about how they work together and their recent viral video contest.
1. How do you all collaborate or work together effectively?
We have noticed through our work together that the women on our team are more facile at multi-tasking. We find it very easy to switch from one thing to another and to keep several activities going at once. “
We are not only colleagues, we have become friends in the process of working together for such a long time, and have an implicit understanding of what teamwork and respect means, which allows us to work harmoniously together. Since we are working close to each other the communication of the team works really efficiently. We all sit in one room and follow what each other are doing informally. We don’t really need to have formal meetings because we come to decisions as they arise. There is a lot of crossover and tasks often start out with one person and then switch across the team members. We have group ownership for everything to do with the website – we all feel part of it.
2. Tell me a little about your video contest
We’re interested in using the viral video boom to spread the word about ending child hunger. Instead of commissioning a video (which would cost money) we decided to have the contest and to tap into the talent of the general public. We have some great entries so far so our gut sense was right! The winning prize also has viral value – the winner will have the chance to visit a WFP School Feeding Project in a developing country which could be a life changing experience for a mediamaker.
3. Fight Hunger is using a lot of new web 2.0 techniques -- blog, viral video, etc. How do you find the time to incorporate these new techniques into your communications plan?
We keep an eye on what is catching people’s attention on the web and do what we can to participate. Sometimes we are short of resources and can’t do as much as we would like but we try to experiment on a small scale!
4. How have these tools helped you raise awareness of your cause?
Our viral video contest was picked up by some major blogs and got the FightHunger.org website attention in new areas. We are hoping to build on this in the future. It’s difficult to predict what might go viral but once it starts we hope the word spread and spreads. No-one can say that child hunger is a good thing so we want the whole world (internet and not internet) to join us and help end it!
5. As staff members who work with nonprofits and technology for ngo doing development work, what blogs you read to keep up with what's going on in your field?
Development Blogs
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